Do a Remote Shutdown for a PC on a LAN

Do you need to shutdown a server or other remote computer? Need to do this from the convenience of your own PC? Here’s how to shutdown a remote Windows computer from your own desktop.

1. Open the command prompt. This may be done by clicking on the “ Start” button, and selecting “ Run” .
2. Type in cmd and press Enter.
3. Type in shutdown -m \\computername, replacing “ computername” with the name of the computer you wish to shutdown or the computers ip address.
4. Experiment with the shutdown command’s switches.
   • -r will force a restart, disabling any services or user interaction from interrupting it.
   • -c “ comment” will force a comment to appear on the system being shutdown.
   • -t xx will force a timeout for “ xx” seconds. For example, -t 60 would perform a shutdown after a 60 second timeout.
   • -a will abort the shutdown
   • A full command example: shutdown -m \\myserver -r -c “ This system will shutdown in 60 seconds” -t 60
5. Another method is to
   • type shutdown -i in the run window.
   • Click the “ Add” box and type the name of the computer you want to shutdown or it’s IP address. You can select what you want the computer to do.
   • In this mode, it is NECESSARY to add a comment. Finally press “ OK”

   Note:

• For a complete list of the switches (options) for the “ shutdown” command, type in shutdown ? inside of a command prompt window.
• The target computer and your PC need to be in the same Domain or Workgroup for this to function correctly.
• This will only work on Microsoft Windows based systems. Linux and Mac will require different terminal commands.
• You may also run this shutdown command directly from the “ Run” dialog. Opening a command prompt is merely a convenience in case you happen to type in the wrong system name or need to search for the name of the system to shutdown.